Received: 17 December 2019 Accepted: 24 April 2023
DOI: 10.1111/etho.12397
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The
entangled Jewish self of North American Jews
Rachel Werczberger
Correspondence
Department of Behavioral Science and the
Department of Social work at Hadassah Academic
College, Israel.
Email: rachelwe@edu.hac.ac.il
Abstract
This article unpacks the construction of the Jewish spiri-
tual self in three current projects of Jewish spirituality in
North America—Jewish mindfulness, the neo-Musar move-
ment, and the nascent Positive Judaism—and explores their
relations with the neoliberal economic regime and ideol-
ogy. Based on the content analysis of 30 popular online and
offline texts, among them promotional websites, podcasts,
and published works, and data gathered during long-term
ethnographic study on Jewish spirituality in Israel and North
America, the article argues that the highly individualized Jew-
ish spirituality has become an institutionally mediated form
of Jewish self-expression. By building on anthropological
works about the cultural implications of neoliberalism on the
self and following the lead of the foundational works link-
ing Jewish cultural production and neoliberalism in North
America, this article offers a perspective on Jewish spiri-
tuality that recognizes the relations between neoliberalism,
self-cultivation, and community life. Fusing the spiritual,
therapeutic, and neoliberal discourses, projects of Jewish spir-
ituality package neoliberal ideals such as choice, emotional,
resilience, well-being, and happiness as Jewish spiritual com-
modities. At the same time, the subjectivity cultivated in
these projects is a Jewish-specific formation—a self that
is highly individualized but remains strongly connected to
its religious-ethnic community and cultural tradition. Jew-
ish spirituality is thus used here as a case study for how
neoliberalism affects contemporary forms of religious prac-
tice and creates new ethical orientations to communal
belongings.
Ethos. 2023;1–16. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/etho © 2023 by the American Anthropological Association. 1